Guidelines to Black Spot management : identification and handling.

The project "Guidelines to Black Spot Management: Identification and Handling" aims to provide the European Union with a mean to improve infrastructural road safety on the European Union's road networks. These guidelines are aimed at the European institutions as a guideline to manage stretches of road with a high occurrence of accident black spots. The guidelines are envisioned for use at European level but also, as the European Union's recommendations to national, regional and local road authorities. The project's action 1 has been the development of a definition of the black spot concept. After six months of work, the ERF experts delivered to the European Commission a report providing recommendations for a Europe-wide definition of what constitutes a black spot. The project's action 2, now under development, is the elaboration of the state-of-the-art of road safety audit experiences in the European Union and worldwide. This research will lead to the elaboration of a methodology for road safety audits to identify black spots and criteria for a Europe-wide road safety index to clearly classify roads and to give transport decision-makers an overview over the safety of their road network. Further, in order to perform valid road safety audit, qualified road auditors are needed. Hence, the project will also provide a methodology to train road auditors. Future project's actions will aim at recommending low cost Measures (LCM) to deal with the black spots. LCM refers to very cost-efficient engineering measures for use on roads, that cause very little maintenance cost and are highly effective in alleviating the negative impact of black spots. A best practice guide will form part of the project conclusions. The presentation will show this project's answers to the needs of a European road safety policy concerning the infrastructural aspect of road safety on a technical as well as on an institutional level. The presentation also provides the audience with the latest developments of the project. For the covering abstract see ITRD E124693.